


Pressure

by SheepyPeanut



Category: Homestuck, Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Basically the kids end up in camp, Crossover, Gen, It's an AU though so hey!, Now pretty thoroughly jossed, Post-Sburb, Weird Plot Shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-03-01 00:05:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2752172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheepyPeanut/pseuds/SheepyPeanut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The universe shifts as eight new gods visit. The gods shudder as they feel their powers moving. It's easier just to hide and deny it. No one could deny one thing, at least: the new kids at camp were weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (density times head loss times acceleration due to gravity)

They arrived (of course) on the thirteenth of April. The time was 11:11 and eleven more seconds exactly. They didn't arrive with much noise or fanfare; they arrived with a slight crackle of energy and an exhausted collapse. It had _worked_. They had done it, and it had _worked_ , and, if they needed to, they could do it again, the eight of them together as a convoluted knot of a family.

The collapsed children slowly moved. The dog-eared one flickered in and out of observable existence, giving the field around them an eerie green light. The boy in blue bathed that light in turn with a soft white-blue as he struggled as well, laughing. The boy in red was trying to look stoic, though his hands were shaking on top of his turntables from some mix of exhaustion and emotion. The girl in yellow merely gave a mysterious smile and looked up to the darkened sky, eyes flickering purple and, maybe for a moment, her skin flickering grey. The girl in tan's hands were glowing, a slight, steady glow, trained on the dog-eared one and the blue one and the yellow boy- just in case. The yellow-clothed boy (the one who oddly had no proper pants) was glowing as well, though his light slowly faded, its work done. The boy in pink mumbled something into the skies, already standing at alert, unbreakable katana ready to be drawn at a moment's notice. The girl in blue was nearly invisible, but smiling, a pumpkin sitting beside her- the pumpkin had been utterly essential, after all.

John was the first to start laughing. "We're free!" he said, and just kept on laughing. "We did it. No more Condesce, no more Lord English, no more Jack Noir-" it doesn't take long for Jade to pick up.

"-no more frogs, no more universes to be responsible for, no more doomed timelines, no more retcons-" here, Roxy joined in, laughing as well.

"-no more porblems, no more oppresion, no more death-" one by one, each of the kids added to the ideas, and one by one, each of the kids began to laugh- even if it was more of an ironic chuckle from Dave and a refined giggle from Rose and a subtle smirk from Dirk.

"-no more dead Daves unless-"

"-no more 413, no more 11 11 11-"

"-no more horrorterrors, no more grimdark, no more tricksters and jujus-"

"-and we can explore and adventure-"

"-Jade kept our land so we don't have to worry about losing them-"

"-I cannot truly see a path that's not extremely fortuitous compared to that of which we have just left-"

"-this is AMAZING-"

One by one, the kids released everything they'd left behind into the sky, one by one they lifted the responsibility and pain (it would never really go away, but they were somewhere new and safe and they had defeated _him_ so that's all that mattered) away, one by one, they let it go until they could just feel joy for a moment. In their houses on their lands, they still had Sburb on their computers, just in case. In the phones in their hands, they still had Trollian, because they'd never just leave them behind. However, they suddenly didn't feel like they were pressed between two stones anymore. They could be gods in their own time.

* * *

At exactly 10:25 that evening, the gods of this universe felt it. Some of them felt it greater than others, the waves of pressure rolling across their skin, through their essence, through the very aspects of the universe. It was a joyous pressure, but an inexplicable one.

The Breeze had never seemed so sentient. Hearts had never before bowed, subservient. Space had never bent and laughed. Void had never given itself freely. Time had never been so well ordered. Light had never flowed so clearly. Life had never been born so quickly. Hope had never seemed so strong.

Each rejoiced, crying out for a new master. "Rejoice, we shall protect the Heir! Rejoice, through us the Prince destroys! Rejoice, for the Witch shall write our laws! For the Rogue shall spread us freely! The Seer shall be guided through us! The Knight shall protect his through us! Rejoice, rejoice, the Maid shall bring all to life, and the Page will grow and create in us! Rejoice!"

It was unnerving. It was frightening. Things were changing, suddenly, and as eight new constellations formed in the sky, the gods let out a collective shudder (eight true gods had walked among them).

The gods felt the world slip away from them for exactly six hours and twelve minutes.

Then, the feeling was gone, and they'd pretend they'd never felt it. Pride would not allow otherwise.

* * *

They had no reason, therefore, to even ask when eight weird kids showed up at the border of Camp Half-Blood, wearing eclectic clothes with odd stellar symbols and fighting off monsters with practiced ease and unconventional weaponry.

 _More weird halfblood kids,_ they'd thought.

But the new unclaimed Hermes campers proved quite the puzzle anyway, if only for the strange pressure that surrounded them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An odd idea I came up with. I'll admit, this is melodramatic. I may or may not continue, but I suspect I will, if only to write a bit more than the very small amount I have here. I hope you enjoyed it!


	2. (motion is relative to the point of reference)

The new kids were decidedly strange, perhaps stranger than new kids normally were, and it left everyone just a little fascinated with them. Occasionally, they seemed to pull things out of midair, though only when people weren't looking. Typically it was their weapons, but upon occasion they'd see the new campers flicking through nothing as though it was a deck of cards, finally to pull out some object of dubious use. Not that the weapons themselves weren't odd enough. The swords were normal enough and the guns, while uncommon in camp, were at least somewhat traditional weapons. However, the giant, colorful hammer, the knitting needles (or were they wands?), and the fork/spoon thing were decidedly weird.

However, approaching them or confronting them about their differing weapons and accents, where they came from, how they met- no one was quite sure how to do that, really, as one could never catch them _alone_. In fact, finding one unaccompanied by another was nearly impossible- even when they seemed to be alone, they _weren't_ , their eyes chasing each other across camp. tracing the people around them, warily scanning the surroundings for another enemy to pound, another disaster that might never come.

Judging by their accents, they were from all over the country. More than one person who watched them wondered, in the quiets of their minds, just how many monsters the sixteen-year-olds must have faced before finally making it to camp, on their cross-country trek to find one and other.

But no one really asked.

* * *

Rose and Roxy quickly learned to avoid the Dionysus cabin.

It started out as just little glance- they had both firmly resolved never to drink again, after all. They assumed, being in a camp of children, that there wasn't any real wine to worry about. Dionysus wasn't allowed to drink either, right? So there'd be nothing there.

But it became bigger- there'd be a headache, or Rose would miss Kanaya, or Roxy would remember being alone in a city of Carapacians, or they'd both remember their times with dead mothers, and suddenly, it wouldn't be a little glance. It would be a long, tall, painful glance, and they'd have to work their hardest not to go in, not to ask.

And it became bigger- one day, one of the very few Dionysus campers came out, wine on their lips and insanity on their fingers, a dance in their feet and an enticing, dangerous cry to two recovering teenagers, and Roxy's sheer willpower was the only thing turning her away, and Rose's memory of the mess her drinking had made of things was the only thing stopping her, and Horrorterrors, it was hard, nearly impossible for them to turn away-

It was then they both acknowledged it together, alone in the cramped darkness of the Hermes cabin, during one of their strange mother-daughter-mother talks- they still had a problem.

And then it became smaller, and a whole lot easier to manage, again. It wasn't that their hearts hurt less or the pain of dropping drinking, cold turkey, was any less- it was simply that when Roxy started to cry a little on her own, Rose would suddenly be behind her shoulders and they'd both be fine. When Rose seemed particularly lonely, Roxy would be their to pester Kanaya for her. When they both cried for their lost parents, they'd look at each other and remember that they weren't quite one-hundred-percent lost. 

They say that the darkness can be held back by a single candle, and that love is a burning flame. Somehow, Light and the Void together just made a brighter light. 

After some time, it stayed hard, so they avoided the cabin- but they did so together, in such a way that when the next tipsy camper stumbled neatly in front of the Hermes cabin, Roxy was still laughing with John, and Rose just kept on studying her book on mythology, both pretending to ignore it just enough to nearly believe it themselves.

* * *

John felt trapped.

He didn't tell anyone, and he doubted anyone would understand if he did. He just felt- trapped.

He loved being in a cabin filled with friends, and he sometimes wondered why he felt trapped, himself. After all, this was nearly a dream! He made friends quickly and easily with the other unclaimed campers, laughing, completely understanding as each new kid stumbled over the rules of a strange new world, easily commiserating with each camper who felt their quest was unfulfilled, who woke him up in the middle of the night, out of their depth and afraid because they were far, far too young for this new world, far too young indeed.

Except John wasn't anymore.

He'd- well, he'd had to grow up, hadn't he? He'd faced the Choice, he'd completed his quest, and maybe he was still silly and blunt and loved his friends, and maybe he was still a little thirteen-year-old kid, completely out of his depth looking at death after death, both his own and others'- but he'd also grown up.

He was the Heir of Breath, and sometimes, he wanted to escape to see the world again. He needed an adventure, something where he could be free to do the Windy Thing, his feet never touching the ground, his hands somewhere in-between the wind and solid matter, letting the Breeze guide him and fold around him (the Breeze rejoiced that he'd come to their world, spinning around his fingers, begging to be allowed to surround him again). There was a part of him that wanted to go time-hopping around, changing the world around, making waves with blue glowy, retconny hands- but he really had no idea what he was doing without a seer anyway.

(There was a part of him that missed Terezi, even if she was utterly insane, and even if she had killed him in at least one timeline.)

So one day, he snuck out on his own, just to let the Breeze surround him again, just for a little bit. He never could while he was at camp. If he did that, everyone would see that he was a whole lot stronger than he let on, and apparently, that was a bad thing. Rose had said: "I could pass as a daughter of Apollo, but most of your powers do not fall so easily into one cabin or another." And when she'd finally gotten to John, she'd told him: "You can pass as a son of a minor wind god. I will research in order to find one that matches you well. Be wary, though, that these campers do not think you a son of Zeus- you would not like the resulting mess." And he'd nodded, and listened until now, when he knew he felt trapped, and really wasn't going to take much more of this.

And out in the woods, a windstorm surrounded him, and he'd laughed, standing on air, letting the hoodie he hadn't worn visibly in so long fall behind him.

"...are you a son of Zeus?"

John started. He'd been certain he'd snuck out on his own. He turned around, and smiled. It was a little kid. He wasn't older than ten.

"Nope!" responded John. "At least, I'm pretty sure I'm not, since there aren't any of those." 

The little boy frowned. "Oh. That would have explained why you're so weird. You feel windy," explained the boy. "I don't know if anyone else noticed? But you do feel windy. And I've never, ever seen someone here do something like that! You were flying!"

John paused. He'd broken Rose's rule, sure- but the kid looked so awed and excited, he couldn't really feel bad about it. "I bet I would feel windy," he said. "I'm a bit strange, here! But can you keep this a secret? I'm afraid people would be afraid if they knew, and Rose would be so mad at me..." 

The boy nodded resolutely. "Okay. I'll keep it real secret!" He paused, shuffled his feet, and looked down for a moment. "Um... My name's Albert, except people call me Al."

John grinned. "And I'm John! People just call me John!" he said in return.

"Can I... stay and watch?" asked the boy hesitantly. John just smiled back.

"Sure!" he said, and then he was in the air again.

And, true to his word, Al never told anyone. In fact, John could swear that the boy covered for him- though Roxy and Jade looked at him just knowingly enough that he felt pretty caught anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...this took far too long for me to finish, really. I'm sorry- I had a lot of trouble coming up with something good to write! I suppose it would be too late to warn you about sporadic updates? Ah, well...
> 
> I'll probably do a few more of these little vignettes before moving on, at which point I must ask- would you like me to bring this into Percy Jackson continuity? Right now, it's at some unspecified point before _The Last Olympian_ (as denoted by the fact that there are still so many unclaimed Hermes campers, and that no one takes a second glance at sixteen-year-old unclaimed kids). Would you like me to bring in the Percy Jackson characters, or leave it like it is right now?


	3. (G times the ratio of the product of the two masses and the square of the distance between them)

Dave felt sick.

It started in the middle of the night when he wasn't sleeping. None of them slept much, really. He wasn't certain if that was because they didn't need the sleep or because they didn't want to end up in the dream bubbles again, looking at the shattered stars of universes and everything they'd managed to lose. At any rate, Dave wasn't asleep when it started, though he somewhat wanted to be, if he could dream normally.

And then he felt like throwing up.

Immediately, he knew what was wrong. A bit angry and a bit ill, he could  _feel_ as a beat of Time, no more than a nanosecond, simply skipped. It was a minor change, but he could feel it. That was part of his job. And it hurt. With a slight exertion of power, he fought this skipping of time and awakening of beast that he'd just felt. He'd like to pretend, after all, that he rarely used his powers anymore, that he didn't have to maintain the timeline, mostly for the others. He still did it. He still knew how to do it. He just only rarely had to do anything, and he'd never had to so something so major.

Time leaped easily back to where it was supposed to be. It didn't like the sudden pull. It liked its new Knight better than the old Titan.

Not that Dave understood entirely what was going on, of course. He could hear that Time wanted him to fix this, but he didn't know much else. He'd have to make several more minor fixes that night, and if he was somewhat more pale than normal in the morning, he didn't mention anything. There was no need for anyone to worry.

* * *

Luke wasn't sure what to make of them, those eight kids who looked like family.

At first, he had treated them like any other undetermined kids. And if maybe he tried to make sure resentment sat among those kids from time to time, well, no one could blame him. It was worth resenting the gods for, worth resenting them for all of the bullshit they were put through (but he'd change that, he really would).

Except somewhere along the line, he noticed that they didn't care, and that worried him. When other undermined kids were trying to guess where they really belonged, if any of them were asked, they'd shrug and say that they'd go with whoever took them, or point at Rose and mumble that she was the only one that they could really guess anything about, or avoid the question and keep going. They genuinely  _didn't care_ , and whenever they were reminded of where they were, they'd get the oddest expressions on their faces.

He remembered one of the younger kids trying to explain the overwhelming tiredness that filled much of the cabin.. "You've had to fight for so long," he said, "if you're sixteen and only just here. You deserve-"

John just laughed. "I've got family here!" he explained, as if that was all that mattered in the world.

And perhaps it was to him.

Then, other times, Luke had a different feeling about them, as he opened his eyes in the night to find Dave looking at something no one else saw or Rose turning over and pretending to sleep instead of showing that she was still wide awake. It was a bizarre feeling, one that crept along his limbs and left him shuddering.

Sometimes he wondered if they had godly parents at all. They rarely showed their powers, but that wasn't why he wondered. No, he wondered at times like that, when their movements and actions seemed just a little bit out of place, when they seemed to flow with their own rhythm, disregarding the natural laws around them, when they seemed to know things no sixteen-year-old kid should know (he wondered if they had godly parents at all).

In the morning, the feeling left him dry.

He went back to his mission and tried not to think too much about it. And if he let Jane become the de facto cabin mom without meaning to, if he watched as their odd content changed some of his earlier pawns, the feeling almost came back, and he decided that he'd have to work a little harder to change things (because the gods needed to go if anything would get done, and for that he'd still need an army).

But he'd probably be fine. He was waiting for a boy, after all, and with him, everything should fall back on course (and everything would be better).

* * *

Some of the younger campers wondered if new kids were always so interesting when a black-haired boy and Grover Underwood come into camp, the boy promptly collapsing. Further inspection revealed that he had just fought a Minotaur and won.

No one is quite certain that he's stranger than the pod of somehow surviving sixteen-year-olds in the Hermes cabin; some disagree. There was already a whisper- the eight new ones had each other and experience. The black-haired boy only had himself. He also beat up a Minotaur, while the older kids had just been beating back some relatively low-key monsters that everyone had forgotten the name of.

Still, when he finally wakes up, he's still the talk of camp, who decides that, for the moment, he's better short-term gossip than the ones they'd been previously gossiping about. 

(Jake comments: "I feel a bit bad for the chap. I'm quite certain he doesn't know what he's getting into."

Dirk dryly responds: "He didn't have a fucking choice, Jake."

Jake took this to mean that Dirk felt bad too.)

* * *

Percy was a bit overwhelmed. He still wasn't entirely certain of what was going on (though he had a sneaking suspicion that he knew exactly what was going on, one that he was trying to ignore with all of his ability, because the implications were perhaps more overwhelming than anything else so far).

He was passed off somewhere during the course of the tour to a blonde girl named Annabeth, who shuffled him into Cabin Eleven.

"Regular or undetermined?" someone asked.

As Annabeth answered that he was undetermined, Percy looked across the very, very crowded cabin. His eyes stopped moving somewhere along the way with a black-haired boy. He was wearing a Camp Halfblood t-shirt and jeans, but Percy had the strangest feeling that this was somehow not entirely real. His blue eyes were hidden beneath square glasses. He was smiling at Percy.

And somewhere inside, Percy felt a powerful tug, as though a part of him belonged to the boy, and a strange feeling of joy and protectiveness that paradoxically made him want to shudder. He nearly missed as the entire cabin groaned after Annabeth's answer, and the stepping-up of the scarred but friendly boy (did Annabeth say his name was Luke?) to his defense.

"Um," he said, "Can- can you repeat that?" Somebody laughed. Luke, however, smiled kindly and repeated his motions, pointing to the spot he'd take for the time being.

Percy then proceeded to embarrass himself further by continuing to have no idea what Annabeth meant when she called him "undetermined". He was dragged outside by Annabeth, who explained what Percy had been suspecting all along. Half-blood. Half- _god_.

(Of course, he continued to deny it to himself until  _after_ he'd blown up the toilets onto a girl named Clarisse's face.) 

That night, while he was sleeping, he looked up at the boy again. A girl named Jane had helped him settle in some. Apparently, this had already become normal. She even tucked most of the younger kids into bed and promised to make cookies as celebration for his arrival as soon as she had the opportunity. She looked remarkably similar to the boy.

"Who's that?" he asked. Jane smiled.

"That is John," she explained. "He is my cousin, dear, and one of my closest friends."

Percy was fairly certain there was more to it than that, but he didn't ask anymore. Instead, he thought about his mom- the good kind of thoughts- and fell soundly asleep. He didn't stir at all until the morning, and somewhere in the back of his head, he felt that Camp Halfblood wouldn't be that bad at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ask and ye shall receive, I suppose. I'm not going to do much more than recap anything that doesn't change, of course. I'd assume most of you know Percy Jackson's plot, so I'll not bore you by repeating it- or at least, I'll try not to.
> 
> I need to go back to replying to comments. I was good about that at first? I'll try to do that on this chapter.
> 
> As a side note, I wrote a Sailor Moon thing. I don't know why I'm telling you this- after all, I'd imagine very few of you are Sailor Moon fans. Also, it's a bit strange. I had to mention it, though.


	4. (mass times the potential acceleration times height)

The camp folds around the new campers- it always does. The camp folds around this new camper, too, holding Percy in its grip relatively quickly. He's still, incidentally, better to gossip about than the eight Hermes weirdos for the moment, if only because he's better at making new gossip to gossip about. For example: Clarisse, it seems, hates him, and Jane, mother of basically the entire Hermes cabin, seems to have particularly taken the boy under her wing.

"You should probably adjust your grip," she says quietly to the boy as he tries to figure out how to shoot a bow and arrow again. Chiron, at this rate, might just ban him from his class, and Will Solace seems to have developed some sort of tic.

"You don't do archery," he points out, "and, as nice as you're being, I'd feel more comfortable with someone who knows what they're doing." He pauses, and then considers what little he's seen of her thus far and frowns. "...do you even have a weapon?"

"I have a fork," she says, smiling at some little joke of her own. "But that does not change the fact that your grip looks off."

"Why don't you just do it if you know so much about it?" The way Percy says it is not entirely kind- he's frustrated and tired and scared and there's still a dull ache in the back of his head in the place his mom should be. He appreciates Jane's attempts to heal (because he is not, despite Annabeth's insistance, an idiot, and can recognize when someone's trying to help him), but honestly, as nice as she was on the first day, she's beginning to hurt against him some. She's too much like...

"I can't," she said, as though it was a final law of the universe that Jane Crocker could not wield a bow and arrow, then she sighed. "I'll give you some space."

...what he imagined a sister would be like.

Yeah.

That's what she's too much like (or at least, that was what he'd keep telling himself). 

* * *

Somewhere, time and space twist and align.

Somewhere, someone writes a line of code beneath constellations that are just as new as they've always been there.

Somewhere, a beast lies in wait to rise once more and take what it thinks is its.

Somewhere, the threads of the world realign themselves.

Somewhere, the time is coming, but not yet.

Somewhere, something is stirring, but not yet.

Somewhere, a prophecy twists, but not yet.

Somewhere, not yet- not yet, but soon.

* * *

Annabeth fancied herself one of the smartest kids in camp- okay, no. She was fairly certain she was the absolute smartest kid her age at camp, and probably a bit smarter than most of the adults, and definitely smarter than black-haired brats who dared to already start becoming friends with her. And while the black-haired kid might just be That One, the One she would finally get to go on an actual quest with, she, unlike most of camp, had not forgotten the more concerning presence that was that weird eight-person group. She'd been keeping track of who they said they were related to, and they were all, apparently, cousins in some fashion, grouped in two sets- Striders and Lalondes were one set, while the others were the other set. Except, for cousins, they almost certainly had different godly parents. All of them.

Rose, for example, was almost certainly a daughter of Apollo, or maybe Athena or Hecate, even if she'd yet to be claimed. Her cousins, though, in no particular order, were: probably Hephaestus or a minor god (Dave), possibly Aphrodite in some weird way but a whole more likely Ares or some horrible mix between the two (Dirk), and possibly some minor shadow god, or, at times, Hermes (Roxy). While Annabeth registered that gods weren't exactly  _faithful_ as a whole, it just didn't seem likely that so many  _different_ gods would have children within the same family. One of them would have had to have noticed at some point and gotten territorial- while not faithful, gods at least could manage being territorial and overly defensive of their superiority.

Weirder still was the fact that it didn't take much prodding the other campers to discover things like: they didn't sleep much, and when they did, they didn't seem to have good times of it. Dave had not slept in over a week at least. Their weapons were, as far as anyone in Hermes could tell, were not stored anywhere in the cabin or on their person, and yet, John's comically oversized hammer.

The problem was that she couldn't add it all up to anything remotely useful. She was missing some key variable. Annabeth did not like missing information one bit. She could come to the conclusion, however, that they were hiding some things and likely outright lying about other things, which was dangerous.

She'd tried to confront Roxy about it- she seemed like the weakest link, tended to run her mouth and act ridiculous.

The answer she got was: "Oh, yeah, I guess we might be hiding things," a wink, and she walked around a corner. When Annabeth looked, it was like she wasn't there at all, and Annabeth was left just as completely confused as before.

Then Percy had arrived, and Annabeth had put it somewhat out of mind. Maybe she'd confront Rose next- Rose, at least, might give something resembling a logical answer. Annabeth, after all, was one of the smartest campers in camp, and could, if she just _knew_ , figure out where these new campers were supposed to fit in the scheme of things.

It took until nearly a full day after Percy arrived that she realized Roxy might have meant: "don't throw stones in glass houses". She was the smartest kid in camp. She didn't need to see more than a few things to figure it out. She just didn't say. She just didn't want to think it was so. She didn't want to suggest to Percy that his mother was just stolen, and didn't want her mom to hate the stupid black-haired brat's dad, so she didn't say.

* * *

To the camp, sword fighting was a fairly acceptable battle method. This, Dave thought, was pretty good, because unlike Jade he'd never really bothered getting the merit badges of godhood beyond the one that made him finally be able to talk in person with his friends which was  _pretty fucking awesome_ because he'd always imagined being in the same place as Rose and John and Jade all at once and it basically never really happened until it _did_. 

The point was that, in the eyes of the camp, both he and Dirk (who was not his Bro) had it golden, even while people gave John really odd looks for the hammer and badgered Jake about how he managed to get his hands on celestial bronze bullets.

Jade never had these problems, but no one had actually seen Jade try to fight anything yet. Somewhere, everyone in their weird little family-group had decided that, in general, Jade should only fight things when there was no other choice. They would simply feel bad for whoever she fought.

No. None of this was the point besides the fact that not-Bro and Dave were awesome for their unbreakable katana and shitty Welsh sword, respectively. The point was that Dave had been  _this close_ to helping with the sword fighting class instead of just sort of being in it, due to being unspeakably awesome. Unfortunately, something had gotten in the way.

Dave wasn't sleeping.

For the past few days, Dave hadn't even been pretending. Something was increasingly  _wrong._

And so when he'd intended to prove to Luke (who was familiar in a misplaced, lost sort of way) that his sword skills were basically unbeatable, he'd gotten distracted by another  _something_ , and then he paused when he shouldn't have and Luke had sighed and said something like "maybe next time" and before Dave knew it he was NOT showing off to the rest of the cabin but instead sparring with his br- his- they went with cousins but he just looked so much like- sparring with Dirk. The new kid was stuck with Luke. Dave could empathize with the beating.

...these weren't the things he wanted to think about when something was already in the back of his mind kept on making him feel nothing but sick and when Dirk was holding a katana in his hand.

They pause for a break for water. Luke's probably going to show him something he already knows how to do and so like a flower that has bloomed way too long and knows all kinds of dirty tricks and also leveled up a bunch after fighting the same things over and over again and occasionally dying, except not dying, because Time is weird like that, and then kind of bloomed into a weird Schrodinger thing with a pretty cool sword and he was pretty sure the metaphor broke down somewhere there but he was definitely not in need of learning the new sword move. What he was in need of was a nap. Preferably a normal nap but hey, he hadn't had one of those in literally three years so what was the rush?

As a result, he nearly missed Percy pulling off a pretty sweet disarming maneuver against Luke. He didn't quite, though. Aw. The little bird was already growing really sharp claws! It was adorable!

"FUCK YEAH PERCY! GROW BEAUTIFUL CLAWS!" he shouted, only to realize that absolutely everyone else had been completely silent at the time, and also were not privy to the actual metaphor that had been the catalyst for his shout in his head. Whoops. Aw, well, he'd have to show Percy some awesome sword fighting tricks later. Rich family tradition and all that.

...there were no more dead Daves. And you know what? Percy was a sarcastic, sword-swinging kid and Dave was going to make sure there wouldn't be any dead Percys either. He'd alchemised so much shit, he had to have a blade  _somewhere_ for the kid...

* * *

Al was nine and John was the coolest thing ever!

He wasn't someone many people paid attention to, most of the time, really, because he was little, but John paid attention to him. The other day, John had also brought Jade! John had told her, too, how Al had been doing a really good job keeping John's secret, and Jade could hang out here with him while John did "the windy thing". Actually, Al could do more than just stay- he didn't know who he was a child of, but he was very good at being sneaky! He was also very good at covering for people- even when Luke, who was nearly as cool as John and really good at telling when people were up to mischief because he was a son of Hermes and that was basically their thing, was checking for things, Al was good enough at sneaking around to stop him from following them!

Roxy had shown up behind him at some point after that, true, but he didn't even think the Stoll brothers had noticed! And John could fly! He still said that he wasn't a son of Zeus, but Al had  _checked_. Even if he was a wind god's kid, he shouldn't be so good at flying- Zeus's kids were the ones that mostly did that, and, and more than that, too, John had made AL fly once! It had been super cool, too, and it had felt like he was wrapped up by the breeze and freedom itself and it was such a cool feeling! Therefore, John was the best ever. He was even better than Luke, who was Al's previous best ever, because there was something about John that was just better. Al didn't know what it was, but even if Luke was super nice, John could  _fly_ and even when John was hanging out with Al he could keep Al in this weird feeling like there was no one there that he needed and he was on top of the world and it was the  _best_.

So when Jade came this time, Al wondered what was up with that. And then Roxy had smiled and gone away and Al couldn't even kind of tell where she'd gone and then he'd looked up and Jade had  _dog ears._ He'd thought they were cat ears at first, except Jade had made a happy yipping noise and Al was pretty sure they were dog ears. And that was pretty weird, honestly, but then she'd grinned and started teleporting and asked him to play with her and John.

And so Al decided that Jade was also the best ever, sometime after she let him tackle her, while they were all laughing, and that he didn't care if Jade was part monster or something (which was probably impossible, Al wasn't certain, but so was Jade). He didn't care that he couldn't even begin to think what member of the pantheon powered Jade.

Because they were the best ever because even though Luke had smiled and tried to make him feel included he was younger than a lot of people here and he wasn't very good at a lot of things because he was kind of clumsy and even if he could be sneaky he wasn't much of a prankster and he hadn't been claimed and he didn't know anyone and now he did.

The next time anyone asked about John or Jade, Al threw up a smokescreen for them with his words and grinned up at them like they were the sun. 

* * *

The Aphrodite cabin had a problem.

Now, not all of them were fashion-obsessed idiots. Some of them were actually rather calm, collected, and intelligent people, if each one was beautiful to a fault. And, well, even if they tended to get crushes on a particular 'type' of person at various times, they all had their own opinions and types too, and they didn't always completely overlap. The point was: Aphrodite campers were not all ridiculous fops who became obsessed with the first pretty face they saw on a given day.

So, naturally, they collectively realized they had a rather large problem when they realized that at least one of them had been watching Dirk Strider at every occasion when any group of them were in the same room as him.

It didn't really make sense to them at the time- none of them were normally stalkers (that was a lie, but most of them were not), and, as cool as Dirk sometimes seemed, he was definitely not some of their types. (Someone had jabbed at Silena that her type was, apparently, large Hephaestus guys, a fact that made her blush). And, well, even though they seemed to somewhat gravitate towards him, it took them about two weeks to realize why they didn't feel comfortable if  _someone_ wasn't watching him.

He terrified them.

And they had no idea why.

But from the moment he had arrived at camp, the Aphrodite cabin, unusually well connected to their emotions and their souls and their heart, stopped letting their campers travel alone. They wanted to follow him. They wanted to run away from him. They weren't sure which one they wanted. And they would no longer travel alone.

* * *

Ah, capture the flag, tradition of summer camps across the country, where the smart teams execute war-like strategy- or at least, have a guy who's faster than everyone else. Where teams battle over who can get a flag over an arbitrary center line first without being sent back to their own side of the line and, inevitably, get injured in their extreme competitive spirit. Where heroes rise and fall. The exact sort of game that couldn't possibly even kind of go wrong when you add swords and magic and high-strung demigods to the mix, leading each team with children of literal gods of war. None of this could go wrong. None at all.

Okay, so, maybe someone should have been a little worried when Dave was muttering something about only having broken swords sitting around after all and when Clarisse gave the Hermes cabin collectively a glare so full of promises of pain and suffering that it could probably have melted steel. Maybe someone should have worried when one of the usual camper patrols failed to properly pay attention to whether monsters were in the forest or not- the barrier existed, after all. There was no way any monsters had somehow gotten in, and they needed to finish preparing for the games!

Now, the new kids hadn't really done much capture the flag before, either, but that didn't mean that Dave and Dirk weren't pushed to the front lines- Dirk especially seemed to have a knack for handling the Aphrodite campers, and while most of them weren't good fighters, the strategists of Athena's cabin knew that those few that would fight could easily charmspeak and beguile their way to the flag without some ready camper. John was pushed up front, too, but only because they'd seen how intimidating that hammer was up close. No one knew where Roxy had gone- Annabeth had whispered something to her and she'd simply vanished into the trees. Rose was strategizing. Jane was told to hang back with Jane, who was also playing medic for the wounds not serious enough for Chiron to interfere with, and Jake was positioned more to scare people off than anything else- the pistols were terrifying to imagine getting hit with, but the rules said no killing or maiming, which limited their utility once the other team remembered this.

Athena had the Hermes cabin on their side this time- they had the brute numbers and the strategy. The Ares cabin, though, was no slouch at strategy when it came to war (and make no mistake, this WAS war), and last time they'd teamed up with Aphrodite it had been a rout, especially with weapons by Hephaestus. But the game would be close.

Well, that, and there were nine new campers to bother, as a bewildered Percy was stationed near the border by the river as a distraction. They wouldn't bother them directly, but they'd all failed to show much in the way of 'cool powers' thus far, even if they were all a bit odd, so it was worthwhile to check to see what they were doing throughout the games. Unfortunately, they wouldn't be getting that much of a show- the forest was far too large and the kids too comfortable with their weirdness to get caught out doing anything odd.

That is, until Clarisse, still stinging from the bathroom incident, went right after Percy instead of going for the flag, using her electrified spear to hurt him pretty bad- though he did put up a good fight. No one felt the need to step in as Luke carried the flag, streaming, across the creek.

Then the hellhound attacked.

People could only watch in horror as the dog made to tear the boy apart- that is, until, to their bafflement, the dog seemed to go right through Percy instead. It stood up, looking around, quite confused itself. And then, Roxy, who'd vanished sometime before anyone had even really thought about finding the flag, seemed to wink at Percy out of nowhere. (Percy would later attest to a powerful feeling of emptiness related to the experience).

Before it could orient itself to the camper that was now behind it, a large, cartoonish hammer and about ten arrows hit the beast, sending it back to the shadows.

"Dude, I knew I should have tried to find a better, not-broken sword for you," said Dave, once again missing the overall freaked-out mood of the campers. Missing what Annabeth meant as she muttered about hoping it would be Zeus. As a trident flickered over Percy's head, everyone was too in shock to notice the instinctive flinch of one Roxy Lalonde, Jake English, Jane Crocker, and Dirk Strider. (It wasn't red. It wasn't Crockercorp. They couldn't help but be set on guard anyway.)

As the camp bowed in shock and a little hate and fear and as Percy stood shocked, the trident started to flicker away- but not before  _something_ , a green beast, perhaps, or a red gash, it was hard to tell before it was gone-  _something_ flickered enough to, for just a moment, send a different shock across eight unusual kids faces. Something familiar. Something they could not place because it was gone to soon, but they knew they had seen something familiar.

* * *

And Skaia and prophesy and Mount Olympus kept on spinning. Soon, but not yet, but soon.

* * *

John snuck up to Percy's cabin that night. "Hey! I know I'm not supposed to, but you want me in there with you?"

"...I'm fine," said Percy. It wasn't very convincing.

"I'm out here if you need me!" responded John. "Jane's pretty upset, actually, but she basically passed out after capture the flag because she really needs the sleep. If you're worried about me getting smited or something-"

"John?"

"Yeah?"

"Go back to your friends."

That wasn't very convincing either, but John left.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...it's been too long. Me and my short attention span... I'm going to try to get back into the swing of writing this thing, if anyone's still watching it (and I suppose someone, somewhere, is). A lot of things have happened since I last wrote a chapter- like the ending of Homestuck, which makes this fairly firmly AU, I guess. At some point I suppose I will have to explain that better. For now, let it suffice: these children _cheated_. They stopped trying to win by the game's rules somewhere before Dave had to start cutting off heads. They managed to somehow undo a disaster and keep memories they shouldn't have (and make no mistake- while some retconning did occur, these are still mostly the pre-retcon kids, especially since I started writing this well before we found out that John's retcons would go as deep as they did). It's up to you to decide if that's a good thing.
> 
> Also, from chapter two, 9-year-old precocious kid is now going to be a thing. I may throw in other OCs at points. They won't be the main focus, since some people hate OCs and this is a fic about the Homestuck kids and possibly also the Percy Jackson kids at some point, but the concept of Al's grown on me.


	5. interlude: the word through the grapevine

Dionysus was an old god and a young one, a demigod and an Olympian, twice-born and of two lives. He was one of the strongest, the head of mystery cults of old, leader of madness and revelry. By another name, in another time, he'd had holidays named for him, in which his madness would take to the normally stiff Roman streets. There was a time when all knew that he was no being to trifle with and no beast to provoke.

That time was, it seemed, no longer, if the way the campers acted was any indication, if the way his father acted was any indication at all. To sentence someone you'd thought had gone after the wrong nymph, place the god of madness among impressionable children. Honestly, Dionysus wondered if his fellows were beginning to lose their edge, or if it was just their indifference towards their children going to its furthest possible iteration. Place the god of madness among impressionable children, ostensibly punishing the god- what were they  _thinking?_

Although taking away his alcohol- that was just cheating, there. An idiot could have come up with a punishment like that, but it didn't mean it wasn't annoying. So many things about this would be significantly more  _fun_ if he was just a touch more drunk. As it was, it was rather hard to resist the old temptation of messing with all of the little snots' heads more often than he already did. The only thing stopping him was the thought that dear old dad might actually  _try_ with his next punishment.

That, and some part of Dionysus was tired and jaded. (It was a different sort of madness these days that he courted, in the corner of a dirty bar, playing Pacman on an old, half-broken machine. It was a different sort of madness these days that he courted, alone in a bar without a drink despite the noise around him. He wondered if anyone knew. He wondered if anyone would care.)

He'd yet to meet a "hero", with the exception of his own two sons, who hadn't gone wrong somewhere. Demigods were, typically, a hypocritical bunch who accused the gods of selfishness while hoarding their own powers. The gods weren't much better- a hypocritical bunch who demanded perfection out of all they met and yet were as bad as the lot of them. Dionysus mostly included himself in this mix, but he knew better than most- he'd lived both lives, after all. And wasn't it pathetic- a party god with something damn near depression? He should talk to his sons. Castor and Pollux were at least somewhat decent beings in this place.

But no- he had someone else he needed to talk to first. Damn hellhound.

See, people had a bad habit nowadays of forgetting about him. He wasn't as flashy as he once was. The madness that sunk deep through his bones these days was a long different sort of madness than the madness that he'd once courted. He'd been defanged, or at least, that's how the world saw him. The subtlety in crushing emptiness was a madness beyond most people, and he supposed the fact that he hadn't killed off most of Camp Halfblood made people think that he wasn't a danger any longer at all. He was Mr. D- he couldn't remember names (why bother?) and he rarely caused problems (he hadn't had a drink in so long that his hands shook and he saw shadows out of the corners of his eyes), even if most people found him irritating.

Maybe that was why the eight beings that had entered his camp a few months ago had written him off.

Oh, he knew they were no demigods, and they were certainly no mortals. They were something closer to himself, honestly, but that didn't feel quite right either. Something odd stirred in him when he looked at them. He probably should have said something. The other gods had felt something too- it had been mentioned. But none of them would like to hear that Dionysus was fairly certain these new beings were more powerful than they ought to be, and there was enough going on with that missing lightning bolt. It also helped that they'd yet to do anything wrong, as far as Dionysus could tell. In fact, it seemed painfully like they just wanted to live their lives. So he'd pretended he was an idiot, even as he kept a firm eye on them. He couldn't just have them run wild in his camp, after all.

He'd had no reason to confront them at all yet. However, tonight, a hellhound had been summoned during capture the flag. That hellhound had nearly killed his uncle's kid- which was, mind you, a nightmare in it of itself. Honestly. Dionysus didn't always remember the night before, and he still managed to have a grand total of two children. His cabin was only ever filled with their descendants when it was filled with anyone. His uncle, on the other hand, had taken an actual unbreakable vow and still managed to end up with a forbidden child. This- this Peter Johnson was going to bring about the end of the world (if that meant anything at all at this point). The fact remained that no one would get off his case if more hellhounds managed to show up, though, so now it fell to Dionysus to try to fix the problem.

(He didn't want a hellhound eating the campers, he didn't say. Some part of him enjoyed seeing actual innocent children, he didn't say. There was a reason his personal madness hadn't settled on these grounds, he didn't say.)

He didn't have to ambush them. An advantage of running the camp was that he could simply ask to speak to the kid- "Jacob French?"- alone, and he'd theoretically get the kid alone. He could also pretend he didn't know that the baking girl was hiding outside the window of the Big House, presumably because she didn't trust him. At least she had some sense, and presumably the sense to send the kid the Aphrodite cabin was stalking away because, while that Dick kid could probably be plenty subtle, the poor, terrified Aphrodite campers were less significantly less sneaky than he was.

He had no idea if the invisible one was around, which was a little unsettling.

"Jacob. Do you know why you're here?" he asked, as though he cared if the kid actually knew or not.

"It's Jake English, actually," the being said earnestly, and for a moment, Dionysus wanted to remember that name. It was a terrible sign. He hated the kid already. "And no, I don't know why I'm here."

Dionysus took a sip of his soda. "So we both know you aren't mortal." He watched the being sputter for a moment.

"What sort of preposterous malarky are-" he started, stumbling. Well. At least Dionysus knew he was a bad liar when put directly on the spot like that. 

And suddenly, the room was filled with something absolutely deep and crushing, flowing naturally from Dionysus's pores. He wondered if the being could take his true form, but wasn't going to get in trouble for the same sort of foolishness that had killed his mother. It would be an interesting experiment someday, at least. He didn't have his answers, though, so he simply rolled his eyes. "Honestly. No one seems to remember that I'm a _god_ ," he said with a theatrical irritation. Jack's wide-eyes expression was almost amusing (but Dionysus was not very easily amused). "I'll lay it frankly: I had no reason to bother with you and your friends yet. But now someone's let a hellhound into my camp, and you're some of the most suspicious people I've met in a while."

He then watched as the boy puffed up. "My friends and I are not the sort of clobbering scoundrels to commit such treacheries against a friend!" Dionysus sighed. Normally he'd interrogate a camper more, but honestly Jacob was clearly such a bad liar already and clearly felt so strongly about this that Dionysus had to admit the kid wasn't lying. It didn't help that, from what little Dionysus could tell just by looking at him and his friends, there would have been no need for one of them to summon a hellhound in the first place if they wanted Percy dead. Jane could have just given the kid poisoned cookies or something.

"Fine, fine, let's say I believe you. The fact remains that you kids- especially you in particular- have a strange pull on me. Explain." Oh no. Now that Jack kid has yet another gobsmacked, guileless expression on his face. They both sat silently for about a minute. Dionysus raised an eyebrow. "Well? Go on."

"Well, jolly gee willickers, this is a most unexpected development..." Dionysus had the odd feeling that the kid was taking into account things that Dionysus had no way to know. As a Greek god, this was unsettling- there were very few things that a god would have no way to know. "If I had to take a guess, it's because I'm the Page of Hope! You must be all up in this boondoggle as well."

Dionysus nearly spit out his soda.

"Hope. Right." Bitterness rolled off of his tongue like so many grapes. The kid sounded so genuine, too. "I'm a god of madness, wine, revelry. Funnily enough, none of that has much to do with hope at all."

"Maybe I'm just looking at a fellow Page?" No ridiculous, child-like being had the right to sound so profound while speaking such nonsense.

"I expect better answers," Dionysus said.

"Gosh… I'm making my best guess..." said Jake. Damnit, he really was genuine, wasn't he? Dionysus sighed.

"I should have just turned the lot of you into dolphins and been done with it," he idly threatened. "Fine. Get out. I have bigged headaches to deal with." The boy left. It wasn't long until Dionysus noticed that Jay girl leave too. Once no one was there, he sighed and put his head in his hands. Hope. Of all of the things, Hope, with some capital letter. The worst part about it was the way the word resonated in him, like it actually fit somewhere in his twice-born, half-living existence. What a joke.

He needed some goddamn alcohol.

Fucking Zeus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dionysus is hella depressing to write, FYI. Also, NaNoWriMo is in three days and I haven't slept. This chapter is probably a bit strange as a result, while I gear up to write some original fiction for once for a month. Sorry about that. Anyway, I'm not sure where 'entire chapter focussed around Dionysus' came from, but here it is if you want it, I guess? Also, writing Jake's dialogue is so hard, my god.
> 
> As a side note, Dionysus is really more of a Bard, in my opinion, but Jake has no way to know that and isn't as good at picking out titles as he could be. I'll explain why Hope resonates with Dionysus, not necessarily in personality but in powerset, to anyone who asks, but I feel like it should be obvious enough if you aren't Dionysus yourself and taking the word literally, instead of the multitude of meanings it can have in Homestuck.


End file.
